Posted
by
Soulskill
on Friday June 18, 2010 @04:05PM
from the dino-mother-lode dept.

Cryolithic writes "The largest cache of dinosaur bones ever found has been unearthed in Alberta. From the article: '... officials at the Royal Tyrrell Museum say the Hilda site provides the first solid evidence that some horned dinosaur herds were much larger than previously thought, with numbers comfortably in the high hundreds to low thousands. ... Rather than picturing the animals as drowning while crossing a river, a classic scenario that has been used to explain bonebed occurrences at many sites in Alberta, the research team interpreted the vast coastal landscape as being submerged during tropical storms or hurricanes. With no high ground to escape to, most of the members of the herd drowned in the rising coastal waters. Carcasses were deposited in clumps across kilometers of ancient landscape as floodwaters receded.'"

I'm about 99% certain you were doing that for the lolz and you're not some bible-thumping-hick, but regardless I'm going to go ahead and troll a response that is related to the article.

First and foremost, I'm going to have to say that the Royal Tyrrell Museum is quite possibly the most badass museum on the face of the planet. Let me go ahead and also go out on a limb and say that Drumheller (the city/town in which the Royal Tyrell Museum resides) would probably be the best place for a kid to grow up. Do a google image search if you don't believe me, but the town is literally littered with dinosaur tourist traps. Dinosaurs everywhere. It's not uncommon for people to go on random excursions and find a dinosaur bone or two sticking out of the hills, which have ever-shifting mud and dirt being in the badlands region that they are. I grew up in Calgary so I was about an hour and a half away from Drumheller, but I still don't think I go there often enough, even though I go at least once a summer.

So, to say that the biggest cache of dinosaur bones found in Alberta does not at all strike me surprised. I think we probably held the previous 3 records as well. Even in the mountain ranges people find dinosaur bones, which always kind of struck me as odd, but I guess it suggests how young some mountains really are. You may have heard of these fossilized things called ammonites [fossilmuseum.net] - they are pretty common in mountain ranges all over the world. Old reminents of ancient sea life. However, only in this certain region in Alberta do they get this rainbowy colour. I found it kind of interesting. Alberta is also known for its Oilsands, one of Canada's sources for oil nowawdays, and if I had to venture a guess, its because we had lots and lots of dinosaurs.

In response to the whole "test our faith" - anyone who believes that HAS to go to the Tyrell Museum. They have set up an amazing display of how we've actually linked the timeline. Aside from the first exhibit, which is sort of their "Prize displays" - everything is in chronological order. You go back hundreds of millions of years and see some of the marine life fossils, then you work your way into dinosaurs, mix in marine reptiles every now and then, then you get a mix of neanderthals and ice age and tribal stages of life, working into today.

All in all, by the end of it, if you don't believe in dinosaurs, you've managed to ignore rock solid (pun intended) evidence presented to you before your eyes.

All in all, by the end of it, if you don't believe in dinosaurs, you've managed to ignore rock solid (pun intended) evidence presented to you before your eyes.

Five minutes in the primate house of any major metropolitan zoo should be enough to convince any thinking person that humans are part of the same evolutionary tree, but it's obviously not. If you've been indoctrinated as a child to believe certain absurd things in order to save your soul from an eternity of torment, you may not be able to shake off t

But those limits have nothing to do with many people's religious beliefs. As long as they continue to make it their business, and not others' (not that this always happens by a long shot), tolerance is in order.

Not to mention that calling religious teachings "child abuse", or insinuating that it is as bad as racism (as the above AC did) is pathetic. Ironic that such mindless fanatics are the ones so loudly denouncing mindless religious fanaticism.

Only what a cursory reading of Wikipedia gives, but it doesn't matter. There are good religious people, and bad religious people. There are good atheistic people, and bad atheistic people. It's not too hard to see that if religion (or lack thereof) was the cause of people's good/bad character, there would be no people with similar religious beliefs, but opposite moral characters. Religion, then, while no doubt an important factor in a person's development (as are any number of other things), is not the sole

That's a tricky one. I've listened to a few radio interviews with a guy who was previously the highest ranking member of the kkk. He's enlightened now, but has a good understanding of how he came to hate certain people as much as he did. In his case he was brainwashed by people other than his parents, but if those people had kids you can bet that's what they'd do, and IMHO that's abuse even if it's done in the spirit of a perceived 'truth'.

I agree that people can be warped, but I mean actually peaceful, not someone who is twisted into believing that they are doing good while they do evil. When you talk about certain beliefs full of hate and vitriol, I can understand denouncing them, but the GP's claim was simply "religion". I refuse to acknowledge a statement as truthful which says that ALL religion is child abuse. There are plenty of religious people out there whose beliefs are truly harmless (although you or I may find them silly). For ever

I agree that people can be warped, but I mean actually peaceful, not someone who is twisted into believing that they are doing good while they do evil

That's just more weasel-language, though. What's "evil"? To me, the fact that Leonardo da Vinci didn't have his own 8-core Mac Pro is "evil."

Teaching kids ridiculous things backed up with threats they're too young to understand has an effect that goes beyond the immediate families involved. All of civilization suffers when we indulge superstition. Sound ra

That's just more weasel-language, though. What's "evil"? To me, the fact that Leonardo da Vinci didn't have his own 8-core Mac Pro is "evil."

Oh, please. The fact that a term is difficult to nail down precisely doesn't mean it can't be used to communicate effectively. If that were the case, we would have stopped using the term "art" long ago.

Religion, being opt-in stupidity, certainly costs us all...

Speak for yourself. It's never cost me a thing. Furthermore, your assertion that it's "stupidity" isn't really well-founded, since the fundamental concept behind religion (existence of a deity) is purely a matter of opinion, and can neither be proven nor disproven. Certain tenets of certain religions may be a

Oh, and I should add that even if I were to accept as true everything you say here (which I don't, obviously)... that still would not make religion "nothing more than child abuse". Child abuse, in my book, requires the intent to harm the child. At worst, you could say that a parent is guilty of negligence for passing their religious beliefs along to their children.

At worst, you could say that a parent is guilty of negligence for passing their religious beliefs along to their children.

A negligence charge might be a good first step. In the US, failure to send your child to school or otherwise account for his/her K-12 education is indeed a criminal matter, and I think it's fair to apply the reasoning behind truancy laws here as well. If your child grows up without the knowledge that 2+2=4, or who George Washington was, or what a cell is -- or with the knowledge that a

Really?1) The placebo effect works very well (google if you don't believe me).2) People who believe in some unseen thing/being who/that can help, even if that unseen thing/being doesn't exist can more easily tap into the placebo effect.3) Taking into account #2, if a particular religion causes less net harm/loss, the adherents to that religion would have an advantage over "strict atheists" - who certainly aren't going to be asking for help from a

The placebo effect is only meaningful if you don't have a real treatment. Next time you come down with a serious illness, how about we just give you a glass of Kool-Aid and let the placebo effect take its course?

Atheists are just as prone to delusions, after all even Richard Dawkins incorrectly claims that "atheism is evidence of a healthy, independent mind" - you can go to a hospital to find atheist patients with unhealthy minds.

People do not always have timely access to real medical treatment.So over many generations it is likely that a group of people who can more easily tap the placebo effect will do better than a group of people who can't.

> Well, sure. Newton was an alchemist, but his irrational thinking in that field didn't limit his other work. It didn't help, either, but hey, we all need our hobbies.

Yes and hence people with such issues may not actually negatively affect the long term survivability of the group. In contra

Yes and hence people with such issues may not actually negatively affect the long term survivability of the group.

I used to think the same way, until Bush II used his faith to justify starting optional wars with my tax dollars, and in my name. The stem-cell funding brouhaha and the advent of taxpayer-funded "faith based initiatives" pushed me the rest of the way over the edge.

Eventually I realized that religion posed a more general problem: in an age of nuclear weapons, the idea that it's acceptable for o

1) Show me evidence that Bush started started the optional wars because of his religion. He did have backing from many others at the top for the war, so what makes you think he started those wars because of his religion?2) You really believe atheists are significantly less likely to start optional wars? You may be right but given what I see from Stalin and Mao, it's not great comfort if the Great Atheist Leader starts killing millions of his own citizens rather those of some other country.

1) Show me evidence that Bush started started the optional wars because of his religion. He did have backing from many others at the top for the war, so what makes you think he started those wars because of his religion?

There are various quotes floating around, some of them apocryphal -- such as this [bbc.co.uk] one reported by the BBC.

Personally I'm not convinced that he believed he was starting the Afghan and Iraqi wars at God's prompting, even if he claimed he did. He just sold them as modern-day crusades (literall

If the placebo effect works, it has no link with superstition. Superstition is the belief in things that don't exist or don't work.

To really test the placebo effect, you'd have to test people who don't even know they are being tested (sneak the placebo into their diet). Or perhaps they need to perform the placebo study on total amnesiacs. Unfortunately, if the subjects suddenly began to recall everything, that would mess the protocol up.

All in all, by the end of it, if you don't believe in dinosaurs, you've managed to ignore rock solid (pun intended) evidence presented to you before your eyes.

Five minutes in the primate house of any major metropolitan zoo should be enough to convince any thinking person that humans are part of the same evolutionary tree, but it's obviously not. If you've been indoctrinated as a child to believe certain absurd things in order to save your soul from an eternity of torment, you may not be able to shake off the bullshit just by reading author X, taking course Y, or visiting exhibit Z.

Religion is nothing but child abuse, and no truly enlightened society would tolerate it.

Five minutes in any middle school should be enough to convince any thinking person that humans are part of the same evolutionary tree, but it's obviously not.

I mean I'll feel weird having to fork over $5 to someone I think I'll disagree with, but it'll be interesting to see what evidence they have. My girlfriend has studied human history quite a bit and has a few geology courses under her belt, so she'll be my guiding star.

And this comment, defensive as it is, is a perfect example right here of why the religious retards are gaining ground:Defensive means that the defender thinks that without his defense, he would lose the argument. Or else he would not have to defend it.Which means he himself puts himself in the weak position, even though there is absolutely no reason to do so in the first place.We don’t have to defend our claims.They have to defend theirs.

>Drumheller (the city/town in which the Royal Tyrell Museum resides) would probably be the best place for a kid to grow up

Except for the part where it is in Alberta, the Texas of the North.

Don't get me wrong, I love the Tyrell (only went there twice as a kid, it's a fair drive from Montana), and Canada is pretty cool, but Alberta in general is only suitable for visiting (sorry, I'm just more of a BC/Washington coastal type of guy).

>Alberta is also known for its Oilsands, one of Canada's sources for oi

Bill: " You know the world's 12 thousand years old and dinosaurs existed, they existed in that time, you'd think it would have been mentioned in the fucking Bible at some point. "And lo Jesus and the disciples walked to Nazareth. But the trail was blocked by a giant brontosaurus...with a splinter in his paw. And O the disciples did run a shriekin': 'What a big fucking lizard, Lord!' But Jesus was unafraid and he took the splinter from the brontosaurus's paw and the big lizard became his friend.”

The only sentence in that entire post I wrote myself is the first one. The rest of them are quoting Bill Hicks, the sadly departed comedian.

Although I will grant you that the reason the word "dinosaur" doesn't appear in the bible is because it hadn't been invented yet, I will not grant you that the one use of the word "behemoth" and the one mention of the word "leviathan" and the dubious references to a dragon are actually evidence that dinosaurs existed at the same time as man. If dinosaurs and man co-ex

God made the world just like it is
He made the fossils just to tease us
Old bones to test our faith in Jesus
Yeah, this'll all be on the quiz http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIwiPsgRrOs [youtube.com]
Great guy, great guy. I especially like his "Ted Haggard Is Completely Heterosexual" song.

And O, Jesus and the disciples walked to Nazareth, but the trail was blocked by a giant brontosaurus, with a splinter in his paw. And O, the disciples did run shrieking, "What a big fucking lizard, Lord!"

What's funny... strange... revealing... is that the people who offer this argument in defense of their beliefs wouldn't consider for a moment the notion that their Trickster God created sacred texts to lead *them* astray.

I was quoting the stand-up comedian Bill Hicks making fun of people who think the earth is not as old as scientists claim. Here's part of a transcript leading up to that quote:

"Fundamentalist Christianity - fascinating. These people actually believe that the bi.., er, the world is 12 thousand years old. Swear to God. What the..? Based on what? I asked them. "Well we looked at all the people in the Bible and we added 'em up all the way back to Adam and Eve, their ages - 12 thousand years." Well how fucking s

They discovered a large herd of animals which died in a a large flood event.

What did this remind you of?

Put away your bullshit anti-religious rhetoric and look at the evidence honestly. Mitochondrial Eve, this flood evidence are all examples of science rediscovering what people have known for centuries. Scientist see something right in front of them but they just have to change a few details around to keep themselves from sounding like "creationists" to their colleagues.

Science now knows that it is possible for humans to live for centuries if their Telomeres were to not deteriorate. There have been examples this phenomenon. Google "immortal cells" for a story about cancer cells that are still alive when their original host had passed on long ago.

"See! See! If you squint real hard and ignore all the details, it looks like I could maybe have been right."

Or:

"See! See! A flood happened once, and there's also a flood in the Bible, therefore it must all be true!"

Or: I have been epically trolled, in which case, well done. Either way, I have to admit that the use of He-La as an appeal to biblical-infallibility, that's the first time I've seen that; a most impressive stretch, and kudos on it as well.

The religious have always managed to adapt their pet mythologies to the evidence of the day. Scientists avoid sounding like creationists in front of their colleagues by following the evidence, rather than exclaiming "GODIDIT!", rolling around on the floor, and speaking in tongues. Nice try, tho.

I'll bite. What disproves - not Biblically speaking, but just the simple idea - the idea that there was a global flood? Because it seems like a lot of fossils are created during "great floods." Nobody seems to ever even suggest the idea that there was a global flood... every other idea is proposed (numerous "great floods," meteors hitting the earth, etc) but why is a global flood not proposed?

Is it simply because a particular religion has that in their beliefs, or is there actual evidence for numerous "g

What disproves [...] the idea that there was a global flood? Because it seems like a lot of fossils are created during "great floods." Nobody seems to ever even suggest the idea that there was a global flood... every other idea is proposed (numerous "great floods," meteors hitting the earth, etc) but why is a global flood not proposed?

I'll bite. What disproves - not Biblically speaking, but just the simple idea - the idea that there was a global flood? Because it seems like a lot of fossils are created during "great floods." Nobody seems to ever even suggest the idea that there was a global flood... every other idea is proposed (numerous "great floods," meteors hitting the earth, etc) but why is a global flood not proposed?

Many different reasons:

First, there's not enough water on Earth. So if it did occur, where did the other water go?

Second, we don't see in the geological record evidence for a flood all at the same point in history. We see at different levels in the geologic column floods in different locations and some with no floods at all. If there were a global flood we'd see a universally dated flood (much as we see a universal iridium layer at the major asteroid impact 65 million years ago). This by itself should be enough.

Third, and related to the above, we don't see any global die off that is closely connected to flood deposits.

Fourth, we don't see the genetic bottlenecking that would have wiped out that many species. The genetic diversity of many species shows us that a global flood could not have occurred in the last 50,000 years at least, on genetic evidence alone.

So the upshot? No global flood in the last 50,000 years just by easy genetic evidence. No global flood at all given lack of water. No global flood at all based on the geologic columns. If it turned out there had been a global flood anytime in the last billion years, we'd have to be so wrong about so much of basic science that it is difficult to find a good analogy for how wrong we'd have to be. We'd have to be about as wrong as it turning out that Julius Caesar never existed.

First, there's not enough water on Earth. So if it did occur, where did the other water go?

Didn't you pay attention in 2nd grade history and science classes? Until like a thousand years ago, the Earth was flat, and the Earth is 70% water. That means water was once like 9000 miles deep. We're just lucky God dug such big holes for the oceans.

Do you have a mechanism for this atmospheric escape or metal oxidation? If not, why should this be considered at all likely? As to the last one, how would the water get from the Earth to the moon? Moreover, the orders of magnitude are all wrong. The amount of water we are talking about on the moon is at most on the order of the great lakes (or maybe an order of magnitude or two more). That's not nearly enough. Think about it this way: Let's say the entire moon was covered in a.1 kilometer of water (a massi

OK. So the claim made about the water is that the entire Earth was flat so it wouldn't need nearly as much water. And what mechanism allowed a completely flat Earth? And why did tectonics start up afterwords? You can't just construct hypotheses to to fit your pet model.

Fossils, by definition, must be buried quickly. It might be surmised that most fossil deposits are actually a mark of a global die off and the reason for many might be Noah's Flood.

Rubbish. First, don't use "by definition" when something isn't a definition. That's' a terrible abuse of the English language. Moving on from the nitpicking,mMany fossils have zero to do with flooding at all. Many are fossilized after exposu

Not entirely flat. Just not what we see today. It's interesting that the biblical text says the water covered all the "high hills" and not all the "mountains." This is actually quite in agreement with regular plate tectonic theory. The major difference is the timeline. Secular theory puts it way in the past. Creationist theory puts it recently at the time of Noah's Flood.

Ok. First of all, what the Biblical text actually says is "kol heharim hag'voim." (I'm transliterating because Slashdot isn't happy with Hebrew characters. "heharim" means "tall mountains." The word "har" is a mountain, the prefix "he" is the direct article, and the "im" ending makes it plural. This Genesis 6:18. There are a few different Hebrew words for "hill" but har is unambiguously a mountain. I don't know where you got the idea that the text said anything about "high hills." (Ok, actually checking no

At any rate, some creationists theorize such a world where high(er) mountains were created due to coinciding plate movement along with the flood. The root words used in the bible imply that water covered hills and mountains: Creationists are theorizing how that might have been possible.

And in this case going so far as to pick a specific meaning of a word which doesn't even fit with the word meaning. In the desire to preserve their interpretation of Genesis they twist the language in a way that no native speaker would. Indeed, the general lack of actual understanding of the text manifests itself in a great many ways (for example the term they use to talk about kinds, "baraminology" which is supposed to come from the Hebrew for "created kind" which they apparently thought was "bara min" whe

I'll bite. What disproves - not Biblically speaking, but just the simple idea - the idea that there was a global flood? Because it seems like a lot of fossils are created during "great floods." Nobody seems to ever even suggest the idea that there was a global flood... every other idea is proposed (numerous "great floods," meteors hitting the earth, etc) but why is a global flood not proposed?

Is it simply because a particular religion has that in their beliefs, or is there actual evidence for numerous "great" floods as opposed to one global flood?

Because to be a global flood it has to happen everywhere at the same time.

And for a biblical flood the water has to be 5-1/2 miles deep.

As for what disproves it, other than the utter lack of evidence, is the fact that every living creature would show an extreme genetic bottleneck in the recent past.

But let's cut to the chase: For those of you who believe in the biblical flood, why did God try to fix the stated problem with a solution that didn't work. Forget the fact that He drowned all those babies and kit

So the world was flooded for months with over a mile of water, then all the bodies, still whole, settle in the same region, then they are trampled and eaten by dinosaur scavengers (presumably they just ran really fast from Noah's ark back to Alberta).
Awesome, that explains everything.

Do you even know what Mitochondrial Eve is? Never mind that she and her "Adam" lived thousands of year apart. Never mind that ME lived 200K years ago. That's slightly more than the "less than 10K" thing YECs are talking about.

A flood is evidence of God? Major local floods have occurred throughout history. That's why all creation myths mention global floods at some point. Because the humans who wrote them didn't know that there was more to the world than their tiny speck of land.

They discovered a large herd of animals which died in a a large flood event.

What did this remind you of?

It reminded me of dinosaurs that die in a lot of ways many people died.

Are you seriously trying to spout the idea that our species lived along side dinosaurs? Do you have any idea exactly how much evidence there is to refute such a claim?

I seriously don't see how you're linking long living Cancer cells to humans somehow living longer. You do know that Cancer is a BAD thing and that most people who get it are not going to live longer, right?

It's more productive talking to a toothbrush. I'm tired of people such as yourself trying to drag us all back to the 12'th century with regards to knowledge. I've heard it for most of my 44 years on this planet.

No. You're willfully stupid. Go away. And stop using all that Godless science and technology you rely on every day to get through modern life.

God doesn't yank people from this planet one-by-one. It's clear that the process of death is completely random sometimes. It's like with a car. You can take care of it, change the oil, do all the things required for you to bring it to 200K miles, but it throws a piston rod because of metal fatigue at 50K. Something was lurking there under the surface that you couldn't possibly have known about unless you built the car atom by

They discovered a large herd of animals which died in a a large flood event.

What did this remind you of?

It reminds me of that one time when Zi-ud-sura had a premonition that the gods decided to destroy mankind in a flood, and so he built an arc and saved humans and lots of animals. Then, when the flood was happening, he chanced on seeing the sun-god, Utu, so he decided to kill a bunch of the critters he brought with him, to show Utu how happy he was to have seen him. And THEN, after the flood was all done, he got a reward of eternal life from An and Enlil for all the cool crap he did (including killing the an

Former Curator and original collector of many of the bones in the cache, "Skippy," was unavailable for comment. However his lawyers, have stated that he is not pleased with this "discovery" by the human scientists and will be submitting an injunction against removal of any bones after his "walkies."

Just to be boring : the target horizons in most of the Mexican Gulf are no earlier than mid-Tertiary (for the examples that get cited endlessly, regardless of how irrelevant they are to pore pressure engineering in the rest of the USA, let alone the rest of the world) and so post-date the non-avian dinosaurs ; secondly, organic tracer molecules and kerogen analysis has fairly conclusively demonstrated that the ma

I hear a lot more from you guys that babble about what religious people would say than I do from the people you're talking about. There's not one mention of religion in the summary or article, but there's over 50 out of 65 comments about that severely beaten topic. Way to be super cool, guys. Love your priorities.

Living in Alberta it is generally pretty self evident that there are a lot of dinos in these parts. The most common dino bones we have are Conservativasorous, Republicansorous, and Stelmachochasorous. Most TriKleinotops have been put in museums by now along side the Deficitosaurus.

Some of them even moved to Ottawa, where they loosely roam around the city to this day.

I heard through the grapevine that a specimen of a late evolution of the Manningodactyle will someday be exposed at the Canadian Museum of Nature rather than at the Museum of Civilization, on the other side of the Ottawa river, in order to avoid controversy.